Icarus Burning
by asiago-cheese
Summary: [[Post-Endgame, Season 1 AU]] Wally never believed in ghosts. That is, until he became one himself.
1. Enter: The Beginning

It's cold.

He can't move, can't think—all he can do is lie there, numb to everything and wait. The wind wraps him in a blanket that turns his limbs into stone, his head to ice. His throat burns like fire with every breath, ripping his lungs out through his mouth. He can't feel his hands or feet anymore, bloated black with dead blood and tissue. He knows that he's dying but his brain doesn't seem to process it the right way but then—

He's dying—he's already halfway there and _oh god_, he doesn't want to die—

He has to get up.

Every fiber of his being screams in protest at the movement—white-hot pain explodes behind his eyes and his bones screech as they grind against each other. He ignores it, blinking back tears and biting back a scream because he needs to save his energy. He can't die here and he has—to—get—up—he—wants—to—_live_—

Wally wakes up.

* * *

><p>Chapter One<p>

The Beginning

* * *

><p>Wally sat up with a gasp, breathing heavily and wide-eyed, trying to draw as much air into his lungs as possible. He shivered, hair standing up on end as he tried to collect himself and his thoughts, running shaking hands through his hair. What was that—what was going on—what had happened to him—?<p>

—Why did this place look so much like the infirmary at the cave?

As if on cue, the doors opened and he was hugged so tightly by his uncle that he thought he was going to burst. He wrapped his arms around Barry's neck and buried his face into his shoulder—under different circumstances, he might have been embarrassed, but he'd thought he was a goner there for a minute and he felt a lot like a lost teenager again. Barry pulled away, smoothing his hair back and checking for any other injuries he might have missed—even though he was hooked up to an IV and had obviously already seen a doctor—babbling too quickly for Wally to understand him.

After a few seconds, he seemed to realize that Wally wasn't going to vanish from in front of him, and he let out a shaky sigh. "Jeez, Kid," he said, his words joking but his tone heavy. "You scared me half to death. No more stuff like this, okay?"

Wally frowned at the nickname, furrowing his eyebrows—Kid, _really_? Barry hadn't called him that since he hung up his uniform.

J'onn entered the room next, looking more relieved than Wally had ever seen him before, followed closely by the stoic-as-ever Batman. "How are you feeling, Kid Flash?"

Wally raised an eyebrow—seriously? Hadn't he told Bart the name was his now? Dumb kid. "Pretty good, considering," he said, rubbing his feet— "Maybe a little sore. Just glad to be here in one piece."

Barry tightened a hand around Wally's shoulder protectively, looking like he was about to cry with relief. "You scared me, Kid." Wally reached up and patted his arm awkwardly—they hadn't had a conversation this long since… well, at least since he graduated high school. Yikes.

"It's okay," he said, trying to downplay it, for Barry's sake if nothing else. "I'm pretty lucky—after all of this all I have is a broken arm." He waved his cast around, but it didn't have the reaction he'd hoped for—all three League members gave each other a _look_, one that set Wally on edge.

"What's the last thing you remember?" Batman said, his eyes narrowing behind his cowl.

"The invasion," he said. "The bomb had already begun to go off, so the Flash and Impulse ran ahead to try to reverse the charge, and I joined in once I got there. I ended up 'ceasing,' which apparently wasn't permanent. Go figure."

Barry's grip tightened around his shoulder, and he had gone pale. J'onn looked… disappointed. _Guilty_, almost. Batman's expression didn't change.

"…What? Did something else happen?"

"Wally, don't worry about it right now," Barry said. "Your mind is in a pretty fragile state right now, you don't need to push yourself to remember everything—"

"Where's Bart?" he asked lowly, because he hadn't seen even a hint of the kid since he'd woken up—hadn't even heard him blow something up and it had been a full five minutes. Something was _wrong_.

"Wals, I think you need to lay down for a bit, okay?" Barry coaxed. "You guys are all still recovering from what happened, and—"

"I'm not a child you can coddle anymore, Uncle Barry," he snapped, using his cast to push his uncle's arm off. He threw the covers off his body and stood. "Whatever happened, I can handle—"

Barry had stood up, too, and Wally was now looking at him with a mixture of horror and dread. His uncle had always been taller than him, but after a few growth spurts, Wally had almost matched him in height. Now, he was a full head shorter than the Flash—just like when he had been a teenager.

He turned and ran toward the mirror on the opposite side of the room—too fast, just like when he was younger, oh god—and he couldn't stop himself in time, shattering it with his forehead. Grabbing onto the sink for support, he saw thousands of faces staring back at him—_young_ faces, too young, the faces of a fifteen-year-old adolescent with freckles and baby fat. _His_ face, five years too young.

He had to_ get out of here. _

He stumbled out of his room—he was too fast, too raw and untrained to keep his balance—and he tripped over his own feet because this place looked just like the Cave before Kaldur turned it into a pile of rocks—there were even those scorch marks on the wall from when he and Dick set off fireworks in the hallway. He wasn't sure whether he wanted to laugh or cry or throw up or all three because this wasn't real, it couldn't be—

Barry—_imposter_ Barry grabbed him and held his arms to his side, babbling about how everything was okay and no one was going to hurt him, and he felt the fake J'onn prod at his mind with a suggestion—

"_Get out of my head_!" he screamed, flailing blindly against his fake uncle, trying to kick out one of his knees, elbow his stomach, _anything_ to get away—

He felt a sharp prick on his wrist and looked up to see the fake Batman standing to the side, empty syringe in hand. Almost immediately, his vision started to fade at the edges and his eyes became heavy, every muscle in his body going limp all at once.

Then nothing.


	2. Enter: The Time Traveler I

Chapter Two  
>Enter: The Time Traveler<p>

* * *

><p>Everything came into focus slowly, far too slowly for comfort. His eyelids felt like molasses and his tongue sat heavily in his mouth, and when he tried to push himself up on his arms, his elbows wobbled dangerously. He felt a sharp tug on his wrist and cursed quietly, pulling the IV out of his wrist.<p>

He hissed—that hurt a _lot_ more than it looked like it would on TV—and pressed down on it, hoping that it would heal soon enough. He pushed himself up from the bed and promptly face-planted on the floor: whatever Batman had given him, it must have been pretty potent to have gotten him this much out of whack.

Wally groaned, pushing himself back up to a sitting position and leaning against the bedframe, taking a look around the room. He'd probably been moved while he'd been asleep—he was no longer in the cave's med bay, but rather in the room he'd claimed for himself back in the cave. It was just like how he remembered it—bare, except for a red comforter, a few odds and ends that had migrated from his parents' house and some dirty clothes piled in the corner. There was even that half-empty bottle of weight gain pills he'd taken years ago to try to slow down his metabolism.

It was so… _weird_.

He pushed himself on his feet again, ignoring how the world swayed dangerously at the movement—he stumbled but he didn't fall, reaching out to his nightstand for support and knocking a pile of old magazines on the floor. Lights flashed and he breathed deeply, eyes watering from the migraine building behind his eyes—it felt like his head was going to _explode_—

He stumbled blindly out of the room, leaning heavily against the wall for balance and trying not to throw up—it felt like something was crushing his skull, gray matter oozing out of his ears and down his arms, popping his head like a cherry. Blinking back instinctual tears, he pressed on, teeth chattering—it was cold, too cold, and he had to get out of here before—

His hands met nothing but air and he fell again, landing in an ungraceful heap on the floor. Wally looked up, searching for something to help him back on his feet, and stopped, feeling something cold grab his heart and _squeeze_.

It was the old souvenir room, from before the Cave had blown up. There were a lot of things missing from the shelves, but what caught Wally's eye was the golden helmet on the top shelf. The Helmet of Fate.

He picked it up with shaking hands—it was warm to the touch and thrummed with power, almost like it was alive. Something soothed his mind, tucking in the frayed edges, and he dropped it like it had burned him.

It was definitely the real thing—he used to talk to it, sometimes, back when Kent Nelson was still trapped in there, hoping that the old man could hear him. But he was dead, and Zatara wore the helmet now, and there was no way to fake the Helmet of Fate, not this well.

"Oh my god," he said. His fifteen-year-old voice cracked. Holy _shit_. "Okay, okay, calm down Wally. You're just going crazy. No big deal."

He stared at his freckled hands, trying not to panic. Okay, he was in the past… no big deal. No big deal at _all_. He could totally handle this. All he had to do was get himself to stop vibrating. He took in deep breaths, forcing his heartbeat to slow and his hands to stop shaking.

Okay, think—what was the last thing he remembered? 'Ceasing,' obviously, but after that? It was all one huge blank, and then waking up in the infirmary. No, wait—

He remembered being cold.

Wally chewed on the inside of his cheek, thinking. He had been in the South Pole, so being cold was a given, but that didn't feel quite right. Nothing about this seemed quite right, but there was something he was missing, some part he had forgotten.

"Wally, you alright?"

He flinched and looked up, finding himself face-to-face with a thirteen-year-old Boy Wonder. He hadn't even noticed him come in, too wrapped up in his thoughts, but now he couldn't help but stare. Even with his eyes obscured by those stupid glasses, he couldn't help but think about how Dick looked so—so _young_.

"Rob," he finally said, realizing his friend was still waiting for an answer, but for some reason his mouth wouldn't work. His throat closed up and his tongue felt heavy, his headache returning full force and all of _this_ was just too much to handle right now. "…I think I'm gonna throw up."

He did.

* * *

><p>He was sitting at the kitchen table, staring blankly at a bag of Funions and trying to think about anything except his newly acclaimed title of time traveler. He felt… weirdly calm. In these cases, he was supposed to be freaking out, right? Like he had been earlier? Or was he passed that stage already?<p>

…Were the past six years nothing but a dream? It certainly seemed more likely than time travel.

Robin was being very… un-Robin like, idly swirling his soggy cereal around in his bowl. Everything felt tense and weird and _wrong_. "Erm… dude," he said. "What's with the long face? Did somebody die or something?"

Dick looked up sharply, something between a glare and a grimace settling on his face. "Uh, yeah. We did."

"…Come again?"

"I guess you didn't get to hear the whole explanation, huh." It was more of a statement than a question, and he went back to stirring his cereal. "Black Canary's coming to talk to us later, so you should probably be updated."

Wally definitely didn't remember any of this happening—maybe he wasn't in the past after all. Maybe he was in some sort of alternate reality? …Or were the past six years nothing but a dream? His head spun at the implication.

Robin shuffled awkwardly—he was quiet, reluctant, almost _guilty_, three things that never suited the Boy Wonder at all—and sighed before beginning. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Being twenty-one and dead. "It's, uh, kind of all jumbled up. Not sure."

He was pretty sure Robin didn't even acknowledge the fact that he was lying—man, whatever happened had messed him up pretty badly. "We got called in for a team-building exercise—a simulation to see how we would respond to certain circumstances. What we didn't know was that it was a plan-to-fail mission."

Wally's heart sunk down into his stomach, recognizing where this was going. "…I remember what happened."

"We knew it wasn't real, but when Artemis died, Miss M's subconscious took over. It wasn't her fault, Wally."

"I know," he said, staring down at his unopened bag of Funions. Suddenly, he'd lost his appetite. Of all the moments he could have gotten dumped in, it had to be _this_ _one_, didn't it?

"Martian Manhunter managed to shock her out of it, and we all woke up back here," he went on. "Except for you. Batman said that you'd slipped into a coma and that you probably weren't going to wake up again. The Flash wasn't feeling the aster." Despite his joking words, his tone was completely flat. "And when you woke up…"

Wally resisted the urge to smack his head against the table. He'd completely flipped out, demanding to know where Bart was—who didn't even really _exist_ yet—before ramming his face through a mirror and trying to bust one of his uncle's kneecaps. He'd probably sent Barry into full-blown mother hen mode. The thought made him crack a grin, one that felt odd on his face and he wasn't really sure why.

Even though they'd never really discussed it, he knew that Dick felt a lot of responsibility for things that had happened during the exercise—Superboy's sacrifice, his and Wally's deaths—and even though he had hidden it well from the rest of the Team, it had shaken his confidence in himself to his core. Wally would deal with Barry later.

"It wasn't your fault, either," he said. After the exercise, he'd been so _angry_ with his friend for misleading him, so much so that he hadn't spoken to him for a week. But that had been a long time ago—for him, at least—and yeah, it had been a mistake, but the whole exercise had been a mistake. Robin had been the leader, but Wally had been a part of it too. Dick had always forgiven Wally's mistakes, and vice versa—it was how they worked. And the sooner they moved past all this teenage angst, the better.

"…I should go," Robin said finally, dumping his bowl in the sink and retreating to his room. Wally sighed in frustration, resting his forehead on the table—no, things were far from okay, and they'd probably stay that way for a while.

The past _sucked_.

He glared at the Funions in front of him, appetite still mysteriously absent. "Teenagers," he sneered. Gotta hate 'em.

* * *

><p>He heard the computer announce Aqualad's arrival, followed shortly by Artemis, but he made no move to go and greet them. If Rob's reaction to him being okay was any indication, they were probably all pretty freaked out right now. He had to pull himself together if he wanted to go by unnoticed for now. The last thing he wanted or needed right now was to accidentally let some future knowledge slip and have six years' worth of memories deleted by a well-meaning J'onn.<p>

They didn't _feel_ fake to him. And he'd known about the failsafe exercise long before Dick had even mentioned it. It wasn't quite proof, but…

He didn't want to forget. He wanted to go home.

Wally wandered around the Cave aimlessly, taking in all the sights. At some point in his life, he'd considered this place a home. He'd known every corner, every nook and cranny like the back of his hand, but now it felt so… staged. Strange and unfamiliar.

He skipped the third-to-last step—the one that squeaked when people stepped on it—on the way to the sublevel, pressing his hands against the metal wall. There were good memories here, lots of them—some that hadn't even happened yet—but they were just that—memories. They belonged in the past. He didn't have a place here anymore.

He reached a dead end—he hadn't really been paying attention to where he was going. He sighed—he felt like he'd been doing that a lot as of late—at he turned to leave, but something caught his eye. This place seemed familiar, too, but he couldn't quite place exactly where he'd seen it before—he crossed his arms over his chest, tilted his eyes, and squinted—why did _this_ room seem so familiar?

This was the memorial room, he realized with a frown. They couldn't mourn the loss of their teammates in public, so after Jason had died, they'd turned this room into a memorial, of sorts. Right now, it was a storage room, with buckets and mops and spare parts lining the walls.

He hadn't thought about Jason in a long time, he realized—he hadn't really known the kid for that long. Dick—Nightwing, then—had spoken the world of him, despite his and Bats' falling out. Jason probably could've gotten away with murder and Dick would have taken him back in a heartbeat.

And Tula. He'd known her longer than Jason, and during her brief time as a team member, she had been a real force to be reckoned with. He could see why Kaldur had fallen in love with her. She had drowned in contaminated water. He could see why Kaldur's betrayal had been so believable.

And he was here, too, he realized, sitting down in the center of the room. He was dead—died saving the world. There'd be a hologram of him here, in this room, six years from this point in time, and he just—he couldn't—he couldn't wrap his hand around it. He wasn't dead, not yet. He was here and he was alive, relatively unhurt except for some healing scratches on his forehead and a broken arm.

And neither was Jason. And neither was Tula.

New Years' hadn't happened yet either—and neither had the event that caused the whole Reach mess in the first place. Clone-Roy hadn't almost destroyed the Justice League, and Original-Roy was probably still somewhere in Cadmus, waiting to be rescued. And Bart—he hadn't grown up in an apocalyptic world whose only hope was forty-five years dead. And Eobard Thawne—

He stopped his train of thought right there, staring up at the ceiling. He was only one person, but… he knew every single one of the Light's identities, every detail of their plans six years in advance. He had never been too great at the heroing business—he was too impulsive, too rash, too raw and uncontrolled. But now he had something else to bring to the table.

"I'll just be careful," he said to himself. He just wouldn't let his powers go haywire like _last time_. He was here, anyway, and unless a time machine spontaneously appeared out of nowhere, he was stuck for now. He might as well make the best of it. "Things'll be different this time around."

His famous last words.

* * *

><p>Next Time: Wally lies, Barry worries, and Conner suspects that something's not right. Bart searches for answers and finds questions instead.<p> 


End file.
